Awesome kid takes cancer in stride

Those who don't know 7-year-old Joey Fantozzi of Stroudsburg probably wouldn't know, just by looking at him, that he's been fighting leukemia for almost a year.

ANDREW SCOTT

Those who don't know 7-year-old Joey Fantozzi of Stroudsburg probably wouldn't know, just by looking at him, that he's been fighting leukemia for almost a year.

The tipoff might be his close-cropped hair growing back after his most recent chemotherapy treatment at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia's King of Prussia Specialty Care Center. Otherwise, he seems like what he is: a bright, outgoing, energetic boy who loves playing Little League baseball, has pet turtles and a fish and shows off his toy action figures every chance he gets.

Born five days before Christmas, the B.F. Morey Elementary School second-grader is affectionately known by family and friends as "Awesome Joey The King." That's because of his awesomely positive, upbeat attitude in the face of living with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

The most common form of childhood cancer, according to the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia website, ALL causes the bone marrow to make too many white blood cells that don't mature correctly. These affected white blood cells can't do their job of finding and destroying the viruses and bacteria that cause infections.

September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, and Joey has been picked as a child ambassador to this year's annual Four Seasons Parkway Run and Walk in Philadelphia. Scheduled rain or shine for Sunday, the one-year anniversary of Joey being diagnosed with ALL, the event is the largest annual fundraiser for the CHOP Cancer Center's research and survivorship programs, according to CHOP's website.

The only ambassador from Monroe County this year, Joey is one of 11 such ambassadors ages 4 to 17, all CHOP patients fighting various forms of cancer. Each ambassador, along with their families and friends, will be a visible team at the run and walk.

"We're Team Joey," said Joey's mom, Nicole Fantozzi. "We have about 60 people going with us so far."

Eleven posters have been made, each showing a different ambassador's face next to the words "Walk for me." Joey's smiling face appears on such a poster in his family's living room.

CHOP's website features videos of Joey and the seven of the 11 other ambassadors, some with parents, telling their stories in their own words.

Team Joey members will be wearing printed T-shirts Joey designed. The T-shirts are in orange camouflage, since orange is the color of childhood leukemia awareness.

The shirt logo says, "Team Joey: One year to the day and still fighting." It shows a silhouetted soldier kneeling and pointing an assault rifle at a giant black blot labeled "childhood cancer."

"Since the very beginning, when he was diagnosed, Joey's handled this like a trouper," said dad Joe Fantozzi, wearing a black T-shirt bearing the words "My son is my hero" over the image of an orange ribbon.

Late last September, now-retired school nurse Joan Mack, whom the family calls "a guardian angel" for being the first to notice Joey's condition, contacted Nicole Fantozzi and told her Joey seemed pale, tired and possibly anemic.

"We aren't usually quick to run to the doctor, but I did notice he was tired and not himself," Nicole said.

On the Saturday afternoon after Mack contacted Nicole, Joey kept quickly running out of breath during flag football practice. Joe Fantozzi had his son sit out the rest of practice and then took him to Pocono Medical Center, where a doctor ran some tests and then suggested the family immediately get Joey to CHOP.

By that Saturday night doctors had diagnosed him with ALL.

"It was like something you see in a soap opera," said Nicole Fantozzi. "We were called into a room, and the oncologist sat us down to explain what all this meant. We asked all the questions we could and, by the time we left the meeting, we knew there was a cure. We were certain he would be OK."

Joey awoke the next morning in an inpatient room at CHOP, where his parents told him his body had "bad blood" that needed to be replaced with "good blood."

"We were waiting for him to ask, 'Am I going to die?' or 'What's going to happen to me?'" Nicole said. "He never did. He didn't cry. He just took it all in stride."

Since chemo involves a patient losing hair, family and friends had a party where everyone shaved their heads to help Joey feel normal with his head bald for the first time.

After his hospital stay, Joey had weekly chemo treatments at CHOP's King of Prussia Specialty Care Center until February.

From February to April, he was an inpatient for four days every other week. In mid-June, he received eight days of radiation treatment at The Roberts Proton Therapy Center in Philadelphia.

Since August, he has been receiving monthly intravenous chemo at King of Prussia and will continue doing so until January 2016. Meanwhile, he takes several different oral medications.

"When Joey finishes all of his chemo treatments in January 2016, he'll then have occasional checkups until January 2021," said Joe Fantozzi. "If he experiences no further problems, knock on wood, that's when he'll be considered 100 percent cured."

Joey hasn't had any significant problems so far. In fact, he's had a year many others his age would find enjoyable.

In August, he and his family attended a Philadelphia Phillies' game, where pitcher Cliff Lee signed autographs and took pictures with them as part of the ambassador program.

At the Ronald McDonald summer camp, Joey did arts and crafts, played games and invented his own superhero, Giggle Guy, complete with a cape he helped design, whose super power is making others with cancer laugh.

This Christmas, he's being cast as a pirate in "A Christmas Peter Pan" at Shawnee Playhouse.

Meanwhile, the community has supported Joey with various fundraisers throughout the year. The family can't praise or thank enough CHOP's staff for helping Joey, the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia for sponsoring the upcoming annual benefit or the local community for its support.